well yet, I asked him week after week, "Were you really serious about me writing an album for your book?" "Of course," he said. "I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t serious." I wondered how I could ever create such a work with my limited resources, but accepted the challenge and opportunity. Nick always struck me as being unconcerned about any kind of obstacle. "You just have to believe," he would say. At the same time I was coming up with songs for this book idea, I started writing songs with Mikael. I thought up the concept of a dark folk band with gothic themes to go along with his name, Bucket of Witches.

Mikael told me of a new percussion instrument he ordered called a cajon which he thought would go great with our act. As time went on, he would tell curious audience members it was a "drum set in a box." Mikael would sit on what looked to be a lobster trap, banging bass and snare sounds out of it while whacking a splash cymbal with his hand and playing a tambourine with his foot, all to great effect. He had to saw regular cymbal stands down to create his "kit." I knew we were on to something

unique when he was unable to buy his supplies in a music shop. I played guitar, mandolin, and sang, while Mikael also played guitar and sang while sitting atop the cajon. Our show became a growing set of originals as well as songs from our self-released solo CDs. It was acoustic, but it was loud, wild, and over-the-top, combining all of the musical styles we loved: rock, country, blues, folk and jazz with a do-it-yourself punk-like attitude. It became part of our act to spring covers on each other that the other person had never performed before. I would pull out songs by Hank Williams, Elvis, the Beatles, Jethro Tull, anything. One time it was a crazy arrangement of Dancing Days by Led Zeppelin. Mikael looked puzzled for a moment as I played the opening riff, thinking of what he would do and then proceeded to play a great percussion part with backing vocals. Mikael did the same to me with everything from Gershwin to Counting Crows to Simon and Garfunkel as well as obscure tunes by X and the Subhumans. The songs usually came out fine, but if they train wrecked, it was all in the name of playing on the edge and having fun. Mikael and I also came up with an entire vocabulary of inside jokes. We would be falling off our seats laughing and the audience sometimes wouldn’t know why.

We hastily put together a recording session at a friend’s studio and came out with a three song CD that we re-produced on a computer CD burner. Very cheap, but it gave us a product to sell at shows. Songs of Freedom began to take shape as well. We were performing the songs I had written so far in our shows. One song I had written early on in the process, Statues Made of Glass, always got people in a frenzy. Mikael’s percussion and vocal harmonies combined with the fast, descending guitar rhythm and desperate vocals about the slow encroachment of tyranny. Mikael added some original tunes to the album as well, including A Brave Walk, Nothing Left to Conquer, The Voice of Freedom, and Who We Are. I was amazed at the quality of what he came up with so quickly. I had a ball adding my parts to his songs, as he did to mine. Mikael and I have very different styles of playing that blend together in a special way. He has a lush finger style of guitar playing, while I’m a country, jazz, rock flat picker. One slow night at Authors’ Cafe, we just started jamming. Mikael came up with the signature riff in Who We Are, which Nick loved. He thought it sounded like Greek music and needed a bouzouki. Several months later, when we recorded the song, we did use a bouzouki on the track. A friend, Walt Kuhlman, the owner of Gypsy’s Guitar Shop in Scottsdale, graciously loaned us a bouzouki, an African djembe, and the curious mando/banjo heard on A Brave Walk. The Voice of Freedom is one of my favorites; a beautiful piece with Mikael’s vocal seemingly floating on top of a finger picked guitar. Anne Walls added some great harmony vocals and I did the slide guitar.

In 2003, we booked some dates in Ireland and London. Mikael had previously spent a decade living and performing in Ireland and knew the UK well. We played one of our songs, The Magnificent Three on BBC Radio, while proselytizing about this project, "the soundtrack for a book", in an interview with the host. It was premature, as the album would not be out for well over a year, but we were on a mission. In the coming year, we built our own studio, performed at the Tucson Folk Festival, and made many trips to Flagstaff, Sedona, and Tucson.